Hello fellow wanderlust-ers!
Not entirely, just a long time in posting and it only dawned on me to drop in because next month I am headed to ICELAND!
Super excited about this trip and it’s super on a budget. I’m traveling with a friend who is in grad school and a friend who currently lives in Prague teaching English. Needless to say, none of us have unlimited income! More to come.
In the past 12 months, my travels have been a bit more limited, so to speak. I went to Roatán, Honduras last February and it was either cloudy, extremely winding or raining the entire time we were there. We got out snorkeling once and didn’t actually make it to the good side of the reef. Mostly we listened to bands play and drank beer.
However, I am extremely blessed and work with someone who owns a beach house there and basically opens her home to me. So 6 short months later, I was back on a family vacation with them! Yes, in August. And yes it was real hot and real humid. But more important than any of that, the OCEAN cooperative.
A short side track: I also went to Mexico in July for my sister’s wedding. My second time to a resort there in as many years, and sitting around poolside for 7 days still sounded nice but I needed more adventure. Most of my family disagreed, but the guy marrying my sister agreed! I took the PADI Discovery SCUBA Diving class (or some such name) and went SCUBA diving for the first time. The class was pricey because resorts are that way but 100% worth it. The divemasters were from all over the world, super helpful and the whole thing went off without a hitch. You do a classroom session, pool session (you can’t drown in 4 feet of water with an O2 tank hooked up to you) and then 2 dives. My brother-in-law is a certified open water diver, and he was awesome enough to do the pool session with me (I was the lone student) and he was able to come on the dives. If you’ve ever thought about trying out SCUBA, do it! I was nervous about the whole pressure in your ears thing, but they walk you through the whole thing and it’s not an issue. But, I’ve heard if you have claustrophobia or sinus issues, this may not be for you. They’ll ask you to fill out a medical questionnaire...
Back to Roatán. I was hoping to get PADI open water certified on this trip, but it just didn’t quite come to fruition, mostly because I didn’t want it to be a bother to my hosts (and I only had 3 weeks in between Mexico and Roatán 2.0). It didn’t turn out to matter because just the snorkeling was beyond amazing. To be honest, I probably saw more snorkeling in Roatán than I did diving in Mexico. The reef is just that alive in Roatán and they put hard work into protecting it. If you’ve ever had as much as a whiff of a desire to go there, do it! Obviously my trips there are fairly cheap thanks to connections, but overall it’s not that expensive of a place to travel to, and much of it is catered to divers. There’s also a few hostels on the island. It’s still one of my goals to go back there this year with an actual open water certification so I can dive in those gorgeous waters, but I’d still be content to snorkel because the reef is just that amazing.
That essentially sums up 2016, aside from a few domestic trips and a lot of stress at work. Aside from Iceland, I’m actually expecting 2017 to be a fairly tame year travel-wise as I gear up to hopefully go back to school in the fall.
P.S. I imagine my Eurail stuff is quite outdated by now, but I hope some people might still find it useful nonetheless!
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
snowghoul
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